BlackBerry Z10 review: Swipe clean

An excellent 4.2" display

The BlackBerry Z10 offers a 4.2" display with an aspect ratio of 15:9 and WXGA resolution (1280 x 768 pixels). Those figures add up to a nicely sounding 355 ppi pixel density, which means the screen is tack sharp and you’d be hard pressed to discern individual pixels. It's not as good as the Oppo Find 5 and its 1080p 5-incher, but you'd have to be looking from way closer than feels comfortable to tell the difference.

The excellent display

The image quality is quite good, too. Native contrast is excellent, viewing angles are very wide and colors are very lively. The Z10 is not the best in any of these aspects but it's close enough to the top to make everything on the screen look punchy.

The maximum brightness setting is just above average, but there's no way for you to disable the automatic brightness control. The reflectivity of the screen is reasonably low, so we didn't have any issues with sunlight legibility.

Contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• BlackBerry Z10
  2.051
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

BlackBerry Z10 display matrix

Battery test

Update: The battery tests of the BlackBerry Z10 are complete. It scored a 46 hour endurance rating. The breakdown in the individual categories is this: 8 hours 20 minutes of 3G calling, 6 hours 27 minutes of browsing over Wi-Fi and 8 hours and 44 minutes of watching videos.

You can find out more about how the Z10 performed in our blog post and learn more about the tests here.